The Beacon's Michael Douglas puts on his stern, and haughty schoolmarm face in today's column. Douglas asks, "What is the Obama mandate for change?" Please take the time to read what Mr. Douglas wrote. It is representative of the scolding establishment Villagers who always admire their own thinking, while at the same time conveniently avoiding reality.

The Beacon columnist fails in answering his own question before he even begins to....well...answer the question. Douglas references what Bush said after his 3 1/2 million vote win over John Kerry in 2004......sees similarities in what Bush said then to what Obama said in his election night speech about being the president of all Americans.....points out Bush's radical cronyism and radical initiatives after his re-election....and in his best schoolmarm style.....scolds Obama pre-emptively if he even dares to behave....umm....progressively.

Remember when the 43rd president of the U.S., immediately following the largest attack on American soil in September, 2001, told the citizenry that if they wanted to do something for America in light of this historic attack....they could "go shopping?" Remember that?

This morning Americans went shopping. Like starving hogs rushing to the troughs.....this is what happened.....

Andy Rooney said the other night on 60 Minutes that Thanksgiving was the only true American holiday. I suppose July 4th would also qualify, but in my opinion, American or not, Thanksgiving is the best holiday. And I think this year it will be especially so. The only thing that matters in this thing we call life is our family and our loved ones. That's so obvious it's often overlooked. Careers, status, possessions, and personal skills are rewarding and important....but they should never be considered substitutes for family and friends. This Thanksgiving, I think, there is even more of a reason to focus on what's important.
The nation will experience over the next 2 years the most depressed economic situation we've witnessed in at least 30 years....and I'm afraid it will actually be worse than is now expected. Thursday, when we gather our loved ones together, we won't know how our individual circumstances will change by this time next year. 401 K's have been ravaged for many, jobs have been, and will continue to be, lost, health care as well, lifestyles will be downsized, purchasing will be in a state of retraction, uncertainty will abound. It's not clear whether there will be even one quarter in 2009 of positive GDP growth.

The Villagers, acting a bit more insane than normal, have a very serious, perhaps fatal, case of the vapors going on over Hillary and the Secretary of State position thingy. I'll be expressing my views about this soon after Obama's cabinet picks have been officially announced.....but until then....

Yesterday, the spineless Democrats in the Senate voted to reward Joementum Lieberman (I-CT) for his work campaigning for Republican Party candidates, specifically, Holy Joe's work for John McCain and his Stuntwoman Sidekick, Sarah Palin. By a wide margin, Senate Democrats voted, by secret ballot, to embrace a political turncoat and re-award him his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. That's some big tent. Perhaps Republican Senators will also be offered Democratic Senate committee chairmanships. One never knows.

I've been thinking about this $750 billion dollar holdup of the Treasury. I have come to some tentative conclusions.

I know from 8 years of Bush-Rove-Cheney that this administration does nothing without having two goals in mind. The primary goal, as was confirmed by Scott McClellan, is always political. Once a cockamamie plan was settled on behind closed doors and from undisclosed locations, selling the plan was job One. It never mattered if they lied constantly about their cockamamie plan, deceived Americans repeatedly and with conspiratorial premeditation.....because the only goal was to sell it.

Big Teevee Media knows how to exploit a pretty face. They don't know much of anything else....but they do know how to do that. Sarah Palin is a pretty face. Since Barack Obama won the presidential election last Tuesday night, Big Teevee Media has focused on Sarah Palin much more so than on the president-elect. That would be because Big Teevee Media does what it knows how to do.

As 60% of Americans agree, Palin isn't qualified to be president or vice-president of the United States. Her incuriosity even goes beyond the outgoing Decider's, and her breadth of knowledge is, like, narrow. However, Big Teevee Media breathlessly continues to cover Mrs. Palin's every word and movement always discussing where she fits in with the Republican Party of the future.

There's one region of the country where Barack Obama was thoroughly rejected by white voters last Tuesday. In Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee, clear voting patterns have emerged demonstrating that racism is still very much alive in the South.

By a margin of 500,000 votes, the state of California's voters amended their state constitution last week to take away marriage rights for gays and lesbians. The California Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, had ruled in May 2008 that any statute that limited marriage to a relationship between a man and a woman violated the equal protection clause of California's Constitution.

Those opposed to gay marriage then set out to amend California's Constitution with Proposition 8 restricting marriage to a union between a man and a woman. By a 52.3%-47.7% margin, gay marriage opponents were successful. In so doing, California voters targeted a specific demographic group in the state to be outside of the parameters of equal protection under law.

One common theme woven throughout right-wing blog comments about the McCain-Palin campaign was that McCain just never got tough enough with his opponent, President-elect Barack Obama. Our good friend Ben Keeler at Ohio Politics Blog commented that McCain's debate performances never focused enough on abortion, gay bashing, stem cells, and immigration. Neanderthals like Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett often scolded McCain for not using the Rev Wright as a hammer against Obama. Conservative commenters everywhere ripped the main media for not telling American voters enough about all of Obama's alleged evil connections and associations. As openly biased for the GOP as FOX News was, even they were not enough for those in the conservative camp whose answer to all challenges is always an escalation of divisive and dirty politics.

What will the Republican Party do now? Is their future to be found in an even more virulent strain of divisiveness and intolerance....or....will the GOP reform itself, acknowledge where it failed, and seek to create a more moderate, more inclusive political party?

Barack Obama won the presidential election over John McCain by a wide margin. Obama currently has 52% of the popular vote and 349 electoral college votes with North Carolina still in the balances. Obama defeated McCain in the popular vote by a margin of 6%, over twice the margin W. won with in 2004. Obama's win is a clear mandate from American voters for our first black president to move forward on the policy initiatives he campaigned on.

Imagine that you are looking to hire a new manager for your workplace operation. The departing manager has done a terrible job and should have been let go earlier. You had given serious consideration to firing the old manager, but decided not to because a third of the workers he managed still liked him, and rules on firing managers presented potentially damaging problems for your company. Now the old manager is finally moving on leaving your operation in a state of decline in terms of production, profits, and worker morale.

There's no one to blame for the departing manager but yourself, after all, you hired him in the first place.